NHS campaigner 'saddened but not shocked' as ambulance queues grow outside Shropshire hospitals
Shropshire health campaigner Darren Childs says the latest ambulance waiting times for Shrewsbury and Telford Health Trust are shocking but not surprising.
Mr Childs, from Ludlow, said the release of national figures this week showed just how bad the situation was in Shropshire.
Nationally around 25,000 handover delays of half an hour or longer were recorded across all hospital trusts last week, according to NHS England.
A record 34 per cent of all arrivals by ambulance were postponed by more than 30 minutes – up from 31 per cent the previous week.
Half those patients had to wait more than an hour to be handed over, also a record.
But the figures for Shropshire were much higher as a percentage.
They show that 276 patients waited in an ambulance for at least one hour when they arrived at A&E at either Royal Shrewsbury Hospital or Princess Royal Hospital in the week to December 11 - up from 193 the week before.
A further 140 patients were forced to wait between 30 minutes and one hour, meaning 76 per cent of the 550 total ambulance arrivals were delayed by half an hour or more.
Mr Childs, has been campaigning for a better NHS service after his daughter, Myla, suffered a seizure and had a long wait for paramedics to arrive.
In November the nightmare was repeated when Myla fell ill again and the family took her to hospital themselves after being told there would be a wait for an ambulance.
Mr Childs said the system was completely broken.
"Now the national figures have been published they show just how awful the situation is in Shropshire," he said.
"Of course I am shocked at the latest figures, they are not acceptable.
"Sadly they come as no surprise. Something has to be done to repair the situation as a whole."
A spokesman for the West Midlands Ambulance Service said: “The ambulance service relies on each part of the health and social care system working together so that our ambulances can get to patients in the community quickly.
"Sadly, the pressures we are seeing in health and social care lead to long hospital handover delays with our crews left caring for patients that need admitting to hospital rather than responding to the next call.
"The result is that our crews are delayed reaching patients.
“We are working incredibly hard with all of our NHS and social care partners to prevent these delays, looking at new ways to safely hand over patients quickly so that our crews can respond more rapidly and save more lives."
Across England, one in six patients waited more than an hour for handover from the ambulance to hospital, while one in three were more than 30 minutes – both record highs.
